Lord, make me a butterfly on this great day. I don't want to go to heaven, immortality is not my cup of tea. Crack my back and make colourful wings appear, give me a slender body and a home among fine petals. I trade eternity for a season of freedom. And when YOU think it's time, shelter my last breath between a child's palms. Let it end innocently, out of ignorance and curiosity of some applause. Lord, turn me into a butterfly, and carry me to meadows of raw green, nectar and light. Give me another season. The last one.
(Translated by Andreea-Daniela Vasilache / University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, MTTLC, year I / Corrected by Silvia Petrescu, coordinator of the translations)Real Fiction is a collective project started in 2013 by Florin Piersic Jr. The concept of Real Fiction continued to exist as a Facebook group, after a volume of stories was published at Humanitas Publishing House. (In February 2023, the group has 10,500 members.) The authors write ultra-short stories, with the texts limited to 500 characters (in Romanian, so the length of the English translation might be a little different) - a flash-fiction exercise on a topic that changes every few days. The group's coordinators are Florin Piersic Jr., Gabriel Molnar, Răzvan Penescu, and Luchian Abel. (Drawing by Adrian T. Roman)
Versiunea în română a acestui text se poate citi aici, în rubrica Ficțiuni Reale. 
